LATE MODERN ENGLISH (c.

1800 - Present)

The Industrial and Scientific Revolution

The dates may be rather arbitrary, but the main distinction between Early Modern and Late Modern English (or
just Modern English as it is sometimes referred to) lies in its vocabulary - pronunciation, grammar and spelling
remained largely unchanged. Late Modern English accumulated many more words as a result of two main
historical factors: the Industrial Revolution, which necessitated new words for things and ideas that had not
previously existed; and the rise of the British Empire, during which time English adopted many foreign
words and made them its own. No single one of the socio-cultural developments of the 19th Century could
have established English as a world language, but together they did just that.

Most of the innovations of the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th Century were of British
origin, including the harnessing of steam to drive heavy machinery, the development of new materials,
techniques and equipment in a range of manufacturing industries, and the emergence of new means of
transportation (e.g. steamships, railways). At least half of the influential scientific and technological output
between 1750 and 1900 was written in English. Another English speaking country, the USA, continued the
English language dominance of new technology and innovation with inventions like electricity, the telegraph,
.the telephone, the phonograph, the sewing machine, the computer, etc

The industrial and scientific advances of the Industrial Revolution created a need for neologisms to describe
the new creations and discoveries. To a large extent, this relied on the classical languages, Latin and Greek,
in which scholars and scientists of the period were usually well versed. Although words like oxygen, protein,
nuclear and vaccine did not exist in the classical languages, they could be (and were) created from Latin and
Greek roots. Lens, refraction, electron, chromosome, chloroform, caffeine, centigrade, bacteria, chronometer
and claustrophobia are just a few of the other science-based words that were created during this period of
scientific innovation, along with a whole host of -ologies and -onomies, like biology, petrology, morphology,
.histology, palaeontology, ethnology, entomology, taxonomy, etc

Many more new words were coined for the new products, machines and processes that were developed at
this time (e.g. train, engine, reservoir, pulley, combustion, piston, hydraulic, condenser, electricity, telephone,
telegraph, lithograph, camera, etc). In some cases, old words were given entirely new meanings (e.g. vacuum,
.cylinder, apparatus, pump, syphon, locomotive, factory, etc)

Colonialism and the British Empire

British colonialism had begun as early as the 16th Century, but gathered speed and between the 18th and
20th Century. At the end of the 16th Century, mother-tongue English speakers numbered just 5-7 million,
almost all of them in the British Isles; over the next 350 years, this increased almost 50-fold, 80% of them
living outside of Britain. At the height of the British Empire (in the late 19th and early 20th Century), Britain
ruled almost one quarter of the earths surface, from Canada to Australia to India to the Caribbean to Egypt to
South Africa to Singapore.

It was taken very much for granted by the British colonial mentality of the time that extending the English
language and culture to the undeveloped and backward countries of Africa and Asia was a desirable thing.
The profit motive may have been foremost, but there was a certain amount of altruistic motivation as well, and
many saw it as a way of bringing order and political unity to these chaotic and internecine regions (as well as
binding them ever more strongly to the Empire). To some extent, it is true that the colonies were happy to
.learn the language in order to profit from British industrial and technological advances

But colonialism was a two-way phenomenon, and Britains dealings with these exotic countries, as well as the
increase in world trade in general during this time, led to the introduction of many foreign loanwords into
English. For instance, Australia gave us a set of words (not particularly useful outside the context of Australia
itself) like boomerang, kangaroo, budgerigar, etc. But India gave us such everyday words as pyjamas, thug,
.bungalow, cot, jungle, loot, bangle, shampoo, candy, tank and many others

The New World

It was largely during the Late Modern period that the United States, newly independent from Britain as of
1783, established its pervasive influence on the world. The English colonization of North America had begun
as early as 1600. Jamestown, Virginia was founded in 1607, and the Pilgrim Fathers settled in Plymouth,
Massachusetts in 1620. Parts of the New World had already been long colonized by the French, Spanish and
Dutch, but English settlers like the Pilgrim Fathers (and those who soon followed them) went there to stay, not
just to search for riches or trading opportunities. They wanted to establish themselves permanently, to work
the land, and to preserve their culture, religion and language, and this was a crucial factor in the survival and
.development of English in North America

Immigration into America was not limited to English speakers, though. In the second half of the 19th Century,
in particular, over 30 million poured into the country from all parts of the world. At the peak of immigration,
from 1901 to 1905, America absorbed a million Italians, a million Austro-Hungarians, half a million Russians
and tens of thousands each from many other countries. Many nationalities established their own centres: the
Amish or Pennsylvania Dutch (actually Germans, as in Deutsch) tended to stay in their isolated communities,
and developed a distinctive English with a strong German accent and an idiosyncratic syntax; many Germans
also settled in Wisconsin and Indiana; Norwegians settled in Minnesota and the Dakotas; Swedes in
.Nebraska; etc

American Dialect
As the settlers (including a good proportion of Irish and Scots, with their own distinctive accents and usages of
English) pushed westward, new terms were indeed introduced, and these pioneers were much less reticent to
adopt native words or, indeed, to make up their own.

Many Spanish words made their way into American English during the expansion and settlement of the
Spanish-influenced American West, including words like armadillo, alligator, canyon, cannibal, guitar,
mosquito, mustang, ranch, rodeo, stampede, tobacco, tornado and vigilante (some of which were also
originally derived from native languages). To a lesser extent, French words, from the French presence in the
Louisiana area and in Canada, contributed loanwords like gopher, prairie, depot, cache, cent and dime, as
.well as French-derived place names like Detroit, Illinois, Des Moines, etc

Today, some 4,000 words are used differently in the USA and Britain (lift/elevator, tap/faucet, bath/tub,
curtains/drapes, biscuit/cookie and boot/trunk are just some of the better known ones) and, increasingly,
American usage is driving out traditional words and phrases back in Britain (e.g. truck for lorry, airplane for
aeroplane, etc). American spelling is also becoming more commonplace in Britain (e.g. jail for gaol, wagon for
waggon, reflection for reflexion, etc), although some Americanized spelling changes actually go back
centuries (e.g. words like horror, terror, superior, emperor and governor were originally spelled as horrour,
terrour, superiour, emperour and governour in Britain according to Johnson's 1755 "Dictionary", even if other
.words like colour, humour and honour had resisted such changes)

Black English
The practice of transporting cheap black labour from western Africa to the New World was begun by the
Spaniards in the 16th Century, and it had been also used by the Portuguese, Dutch and French, but it was
adopted in earnest by the British in the early 17th Century. The British had established numerous outposts in
the Caribbean (dubbed the West Indies by Columbus out of the conviction that he had reached the spice
islands of the Indies, or Asia, by a western route), and had developed a whole trading empire to take
advantage of the tropical climate of the region. The labour-intensive work on tobacco, cocoa, cotton and
particularly sugar plantations required large numbers of cheap workers, and the Atlantic slave trade triangle
(Britain - West Africa - Americas) was developed to supply it, although soon a demand also grew for
.household servants
The numbers of African slaves in the America alone grew from just twenty in 1619 to over 4 million at the time
of the American abolition of slavery after the Civil War in 1865 (the British had abolished the slave trade
earlier, in 1807). The slaves transported by the British to work in the plantations of the American south and the
islands of the West Indies were mainly from a region of West Africa rich in hundreds of different languages,
and most were superb natural linguists, often speaking anywhere between three and six African languages
fluently. Due to the deliberate practice of shipping slaves of different language backgrounds together (in an
attempt to avoid plots and rebellions), the captives developed their own English-based pidgin language, which
they used to communicate with the largely English-speaking sailors and landowners, and also between
.themselves

A pidgin is a reduced language that results from extended contact between people with no language in
common. Verb forms in particular are simplified (e.g. me go run school, him done go, etc), but adjectives
are also often used instead of adverbs, verbs instead of prepositions, pronouns are no inflected, etc. The
resulting stripped-down language may be crude but it is usually serviceable and efficient.Once established in
the Americas, these pidgins developed into stable creoles, forms of simplified English combined with many
.words from a variety of African languages

Many of the words may look strange at first, but the meanings become quite clear when spoken aloud, and
the spellings give a good approximation of a black/Caribbean accent (e.g. notus for notice, bole for bold,
ansur for answer, skade for scared, etc). Dis/dem/dey are used for this/them/they in order to avoid the difficult
English th sound, and many other usages are familiar from modern Caribbean accents (e.g. mout for mouth,
ting for thing, gwine for going, etc). For simplicity, adjectives often stand in for adverbs (e.g. coward man) and
verbs may be simplified (e.g. Brer Lion bin a hunt) or left out completely (e.g. Brer Lion stonish). Double
adjectives (e.g. big big) are often used as intensifiers, although not in this particular passage.

20th Century
By the end of the 19th Century, the USA had overtaken the UK as the worlds fastest growing economy, and
Americas economic imperialism continued the momentum of the British Industrial Revolution into the 20th
Century. The American dominance in economic and military power, as well as its overwhelming influence in
the media and popular culture has ensured that English has remained the single most important language in
.the world and the closest thing to a global language the world has ever seen

Perhaps in reaction to the perceived appropriation or co-option of English by the United States, a certain
amount of language snobbery continued to grow in England. In 1917, Daniel Jones introduced the concept of
Received Pronunciation (sometimes called the Queens English, BBC English or Public School English) to
describe the variety of Standard English spoken by the educated middle and upper classes, irrespective of
what part of England they may live in. The invention of radio in the 1920s, and then television in the 1930s,
disseminated this archetypal English accent to the masses and further entrenched its position, despite the fact
that it was only spoken by about 1 in 50 in the general population. At the same time, regional accents were
further denigrated and marginalized. However, since the Second World War, a greater permissiveness
.towards regional English varieties has taken hold in England, both in education and in the media

The 20th Century was, among other things, a century of world wars, technological transformation, and
globalization, and each has provided a source of new additions to the lexicon. For example, words like
blockbuster, nose-dive, shell-shocked, camouflage, radar, etc, are all military terms which have made their
way into standard English during the World Wars. As an interesting aside, in 1941, when Sir Winston Churchill
wanted to plumb the depths of the English soul at a particularly crucial and difficult time in the Second World
War, almost all of the words in the main part of his famous speech ("we shall fight on the beaches... we shall
never surrender") were of Anglo-Saxon origin, with the significant exception of surrender (a French loanword).
.The speech is also a good example of what was considered Received Pronunciation at the time

The explosion in electronic and computer terminology in the latter part of the 20th Century (e.g. byte,
cyberspace, software, hacker, laptop, hard-drive, database, online, hi-tech, microchip, etc) was just one
element driving the dramatic increase in new English terms, particularly due to the dominance of the USA in
the development of computer technology, from IBM to Apple to Microsoft. Parallel to this, science fiction
literature has contributed it own vocabulary to the common word-stock, including terms such as robotics,
.hyperspace, warp-speed, cyberpunk, droid, nanotech, nanobot, etc

Later, the Internet it gave rise to (the word Internet itself is derived form Latin, as are audio, video, quantum,
etc) generated its own set of neologisms (e.g. online, noob, flamer, spam, phishing, larping, whitelist,
download, blog, vblog, blogosphere, emoticon, podcast, warez, trolling, hashtag, wifi, bitcoin, selfie, etc). In
addition, a whole body of acronyms, contractions and shorthands for use in email, social networking and
cellphone texting has grown up, particularly among the young, including the relatively well-known lol, ttfn, btw,
omg, wtf, plz, thx, ur, l8ter, etc. The debate (db8) continues as to whether texting is killing or enriching the
.English language

Present Day
The language continues to change and develop and to grow apace, expanding to incorporate new jargons,
slangs, technologies, toys, foods and gadgets. In the current digital age, English is going though a new
linguistic peak in terms of word acquisition, as it peaked before during Shakespeares time, and then again
during the Industrial Revolution, and at the height of the British Empire. According to one recent estimate, it is
expanding by over 8,500 words a year (other estimates are significantly higher), compared to an estimated
annual increase of around 1,000 words at the beginning of the 20th Century, and has almost doubled in size in
.the last century

Neologisms are being added all the time, including recent inclusions such as fashionista, metrosexual, McJob,
McMansion, wussy, bling, nerd, pear-shaped, unplugged, fracking, truthiness, locavore, parkour, sexting,
crowdsourcing, regift, meme, selfie, earworm, meh, diss, suss, emo, twerk, schmeat, chav, ladette, punked,
.vaping, etc, etc

In recent years, there has been an increasing trend towards using an existing words as a different part of
speech, especially the verbification of nouns (e.g. the word verbify is itself a prime example; others include to
thumb, to parrot, to email, to text, to google, to medal, to critique, to leverage, to sequence, to interface, to
tase, to speechify, to incentivize, etc), although some modern-sounding verbs have surprisingly been in the
language for centuries (e.g. to author, to impact, to message, to parent, to channel, to monetize, to mentor,
.etc). "Nounification" also occurs, particularly in business contexts (e.g. an ask, a build, a solve, a fail, etc)

The meanings of words also continue to change, part of a process that has been going on almost as long as
the language itself. For instance, to the disgust of many, alternate is now almost universally accepted in North
America as a replacement for alternative; momentarily has come to mean "very soon" and not (or as well as)
"for a very short period of time"; and the use of the modifier literally to mean its exact opposite has recently
found it way into the Oxford English Dictionary (where one of its meanings is shown as "used for emphasis
rather than being actually true"). In some walks of life, bad, sick, dope and wicked are all now different
.varieties of good

In our faddy, disposable, Internet-informed, digital age, there are even word trends that appear to be custom-
designed to be short-lived and epehemeral, words and phrases that are considered no longer trendy once
they reach anything close to mainstream usage. Examples might be bae, on fleek, YOLO (you only live once),
fanute, etc. Resources like the Urban Dictionary exist for the rest of us to keep track of such fleeting
.phenomena